The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
When a user wishes to print an electronic document on a printing device, a print subsystem on the user's client device processes application data generated by an application program and generates print data. The print data includes all the information required by the printing device to print the electronic document. For example, a user creates an electronic document using a word processing application on a PC. The user then selects a print option in the word processing application to request that the electronic document be printed to a particular printer. The print subsystem on the PC processes this request by processing the application data generated by the word processing application to generate print data in a format supported by the particular printer, and sends the print data to the particular printer. Generally, print data is sent to a printing device as part of a print job that is recognized by the printing device.
Generating print data conventionally involves the use of a print driver that is specific to the target printing device. That is, each print driver converts print data into a format supported by the target printing device. Therefore, in order for a client device to correctly print to a particular printing device, the client device must have installed on it the print driver for the particular printing device.
Current print systems suffer from multiple disadvantages. For example, print drivers do not provide language support for certain languages in which a user might be prefer. The only available option for such a user is to either (a) locate a print driver that has language support for a particular language or (b) do without that language support. However, one of the problems with having to locate a new print driver that supports a particular language is that the new print driver must be generated and distributed to a large number of users. Printing device manufacturers attempt to provide current print drivers available on their Website for download, but many users do not know to check a manufacturer's Website for current drivers. Furthermore, many print drivers must be certified by the company that makes the operating system or by printing device manufactures, which can be time consuming and expensive. Any changes to a print driver typically trigger a re-certification requirement.